


Multiplicity

by Murf1307



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Nexus!Alex, Philosophy, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:06:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6230665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex Summers doesn't believe in miracles, but he does believe in the multiplicity of the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Multiplicity

**Author's Note:**

> I made a graphic and in the middle of making the graphic i took a break and wrote this fic. They go together.

Alex Summers does not believe in miracles, but he does believe in the multiplicity of the universe.

 

He has to, because there has to be a world where Darwin and Sean and Angel are all still breathing, where maybe he has something besides a war — there’s always a war, sure, but maybe there’s a world where he gets to keep something else besides it.

 

He thinks about all the worlds he’ll never see, thick in the jungle in Vietnam, late in his tour.  He thinks about the one where he died instead of Darwin.

 

He thinks about the world where Erik and Raven didn’t walk away on that beach, where maybe Charles didn’t get shot.  He thinks about the world where _Kennedy_  didn’t get shot, where Erik never went to prison for it.  

 

He thinks a lot about Angel.  How she deserved a world that would treat her like a queen.  He barely knew her, but he knew that.

 

Darwin’s touch haunts, too, so he’s almost never _not_  thinking about the worlds where Darwin survived, because there have to be a million of them. 

 

He just happens to live in the one where he didn’t.

 

And sure, that hurts, but it’s easier when he thinks about all the worlds where Darwin’s still out there, somewhere, smiling, laughing, passing other versions of Angel and Sean Coca-Cola bottles in the summer heat, or where he never fell in with Charles and Erik and missed the end of the world on a beach in Cuba.

 

Maybe in those worlds, Darwin has a family, a pretty wife and cute kids who can fly and grow gills.  He deserves that, Alex thinks.  At least in some of those worlds, right?

 

The only world Alex doesn’t think about is the one, just the one, stacked on millions and millions of others, where he gets to be the one to hold Darwin at night.  He’s not so far gone as to think there’s more than one of those.

 

He hopes he’s happy, in that other world, hopes he knows how lucky he is, hands tangled up with Darwin’s, heads bent conspiratorially over pinball machines and maybe even tables full of tactics.

 

If he let himself, he’d think that that’s a world where they get to be heroes together.

 

But he doesn’t let himself, because as much as he knows that world is out there somewhere, imagining it hurts too much.

 

Because this is one of the worlds where Alex can’t have all of that, where maybe it’s the worst of all possible worlds — after all, Angel, Darwin and Sean are dead, Erik’s in prison, Raven’s gone into the wind, and Hank and Charles are playing house, pretending to be human when they really, really aren’t.

 

This is the world where he learns to count helicopter rotors and evade landmines, the world where he hasn’t been made for anything but war since nineteen sixty-two, the world where sometimes, at night, his blood burns for things he can never have.

 

And as he falls asleep, something ghosts across his hand, across his chest, familiar, but just the wind.

 

So yes, Alex Summers believes in the multiplicity of the universe.

 

He just knows it doesn’t matter.


End file.
